Maria Iacovou
Urbanism and state formation in the second and first millennia BC. Mediterranean island cultures in the Late Bronze and Iron Ages. The archaeology of migration/colonisation. Ancient Cyprus: landscape studies, economic systems, urban topography and historical cartography.
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ACTES DU SYMPOSIUM DE NICOSIE, 4-5 mai 2012
« BASILEIS ET POLEIS SUR L’ÎLE DE CHYPRE »
Les régimes politiques chypriotes dans leur contexte méditerranéen
Papers by Maria Iacovou
Recovery and Restructuration in the Early Iron Age
Near East and Mediterranean.
Proceedings of the 9th Melammu Workshop, Tartu
Edited by Mait Kõiv and Raz Kletter Responses to the 12th Century BC Collapse
Melammu Workshops and Monographs 10
Coins issued by the kings of the Cypriot polities in the course of plus or minus 200 years –between the second half of the sixth and the last decades of the fourth centuries BC– are, primarily, known from museum and private collections. At best, these specimens may have a general provenance (“from Cyprus”, since they were minted and circulated on the island), but they have
little to no contextual history. Hence, their study is beset with often insurmountable difficulties. This makes coins and coin hoards found in the context
of organised excavation projects particularly valuable for the political history
and monetary economy of the island’s Iron Age polities, especially as regards
the activity of their autonomous mints. At the same time, the issuing authority that minted them, often a historically recorded Cypriot king, can be associated spatially and temporally with the archaeological landscape of his polity.
In the present article, stimulated by the discovery of a bronze coin found
in the context of controlled field work conducted by the Palaepaphos Urban
Landscape Project (hereon, PULP)1
on the plateau of Palaepaphos-Hadjiabdoullah one km east of the sanctuary of the Cypriot goddess, the numismatist (EM)
initiates the discussion with an updated assessment of the state of research regarding the bronze coinage of the Paphian mint under its last fourth-century kings, Timarchos and his son Nikokles. The archaeologist (MI) responds
by integrating the information acquired through the coin’s analysis with the
information provided by the coin’s context in the fourth-century citadel landscape of Paphos, and its relation to two exceptional secular monuments on the plateau of Hadjiabdoullah (fig. 1). The integration of the currently available archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence appears to support
a longer-term process regarding the foundation of Nea Paphos in the fourth century BC.
In the last two decades the study of Iron Age Cyprus has made a gradual
but decisive move away from externally-generated cycles of complexity
and ethnic (“Hellenization” and equally “Phoenicianization”) narratives.
Colonization constructs have begun to fade giving way to a
“Cyprocentric” research methodology which considers the development
of the island’s micro-states as a longue durée episode distinguished by
settlement and landscape continuities, transformations and transition,
rather than sharp breaks that separate the Late Bronze from the Iron
Age.
This paper shows that the history of the island’s ancient States consists
of the fluid regional histories of many polities: some of them remain
archaeologically invisible and mysterious to this day ; a few others
appear historically less elusive because they achieved a degree of
longevity as Iron Age “kingdoms” to the end of the fourth century BC.
The chapter begins with a stance from the “cultural anthem” (Iacovou 2008a, 279) of
those Greeks whose homelands were, and in the case of Cyprus still are, on the frontiers
of the eastern Mediterranean. Of them all, the living Hellenism of Cyprus presents a stubborn historical continuity, which dates back to the penultimate century of the second
millennium BC. “Kavafis encapsulates the diachronic identity of this Eastern Mediterranean
frontier Hellenism in ‘Going back home from Greece,’ a poem written in 1914 that no
Greek historian/archaeologist can afford to disregard” (Iacovou 2008a, 278). This view
is endorsed by Arnaldo Momigliano’s emphasis on “the importance of historians understanding both ancient and modern contexts in order to obtain an effective appreciation of
any piece of historical scholarship” (Moore and Macgregor Morris 2008, 4).
in the archaeology of the Phoenician and the Cypriot city-states. Today, a good number of region-specific and diachronic landscape projects are transforming the respective archaeological narratives of Phoenicia and Cyprus on the basis of exclusively homeland evidence. Their rich data support human mobility, commercial exchanges and cultural influences moving either way in the 2nd and 1st millennia bc. The presence of Semitic speakers in specific polities of Cyprus can now be viewed in the context of the dissolution of the Late Bronze Age economic system, and as part of an increased population mobility across the Mediterranean, which also brought Greek speakers to
the island. Neither the Greeks nor the Phoenicians expressed colonial behaviours in Cyprus; both became integral components of the island’s socio-political identity and, eventually, the Cypro-Phoenicians founded in Kition a Cypriot, not a Levantine, “kingdom”.
ACTES DU SYMPOSIUM DE NICOSIE, 4-5 mai 2012
« BASILEIS ET POLEIS SUR L’ÎLE DE CHYPRE »
Les régimes politiques chypriotes dans leur contexte méditerranéen
Recovery and Restructuration in the Early Iron Age
Near East and Mediterranean.
Proceedings of the 9th Melammu Workshop, Tartu
Edited by Mait Kõiv and Raz Kletter Responses to the 12th Century BC Collapse
Melammu Workshops and Monographs 10
Coins issued by the kings of the Cypriot polities in the course of plus or minus 200 years –between the second half of the sixth and the last decades of the fourth centuries BC– are, primarily, known from museum and private collections. At best, these specimens may have a general provenance (“from Cyprus”, since they were minted and circulated on the island), but they have
little to no contextual history. Hence, their study is beset with often insurmountable difficulties. This makes coins and coin hoards found in the context
of organised excavation projects particularly valuable for the political history
and monetary economy of the island’s Iron Age polities, especially as regards
the activity of their autonomous mints. At the same time, the issuing authority that minted them, often a historically recorded Cypriot king, can be associated spatially and temporally with the archaeological landscape of his polity.
In the present article, stimulated by the discovery of a bronze coin found
in the context of controlled field work conducted by the Palaepaphos Urban
Landscape Project (hereon, PULP)1
on the plateau of Palaepaphos-Hadjiabdoullah one km east of the sanctuary of the Cypriot goddess, the numismatist (EM)
initiates the discussion with an updated assessment of the state of research regarding the bronze coinage of the Paphian mint under its last fourth-century kings, Timarchos and his son Nikokles. The archaeologist (MI) responds
by integrating the information acquired through the coin’s analysis with the
information provided by the coin’s context in the fourth-century citadel landscape of Paphos, and its relation to two exceptional secular monuments on the plateau of Hadjiabdoullah (fig. 1). The integration of the currently available archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic evidence appears to support
a longer-term process regarding the foundation of Nea Paphos in the fourth century BC.
In the last two decades the study of Iron Age Cyprus has made a gradual
but decisive move away from externally-generated cycles of complexity
and ethnic (“Hellenization” and equally “Phoenicianization”) narratives.
Colonization constructs have begun to fade giving way to a
“Cyprocentric” research methodology which considers the development
of the island’s micro-states as a longue durée episode distinguished by
settlement and landscape continuities, transformations and transition,
rather than sharp breaks that separate the Late Bronze from the Iron
Age.
This paper shows that the history of the island’s ancient States consists
of the fluid regional histories of many polities: some of them remain
archaeologically invisible and mysterious to this day ; a few others
appear historically less elusive because they achieved a degree of
longevity as Iron Age “kingdoms” to the end of the fourth century BC.
The chapter begins with a stance from the “cultural anthem” (Iacovou 2008a, 279) of
those Greeks whose homelands were, and in the case of Cyprus still are, on the frontiers
of the eastern Mediterranean. Of them all, the living Hellenism of Cyprus presents a stubborn historical continuity, which dates back to the penultimate century of the second
millennium BC. “Kavafis encapsulates the diachronic identity of this Eastern Mediterranean
frontier Hellenism in ‘Going back home from Greece,’ a poem written in 1914 that no
Greek historian/archaeologist can afford to disregard” (Iacovou 2008a, 278). This view
is endorsed by Arnaldo Momigliano’s emphasis on “the importance of historians understanding both ancient and modern contexts in order to obtain an effective appreciation of
any piece of historical scholarship” (Moore and Macgregor Morris 2008, 4).
in the archaeology of the Phoenician and the Cypriot city-states. Today, a good number of region-specific and diachronic landscape projects are transforming the respective archaeological narratives of Phoenicia and Cyprus on the basis of exclusively homeland evidence. Their rich data support human mobility, commercial exchanges and cultural influences moving either way in the 2nd and 1st millennia bc. The presence of Semitic speakers in specific polities of Cyprus can now be viewed in the context of the dissolution of the Late Bronze Age economic system, and as part of an increased population mobility across the Mediterranean, which also brought Greek speakers to
the island. Neither the Greeks nor the Phoenicians expressed colonial behaviours in Cyprus; both became integral components of the island’s socio-political identity and, eventually, the Cypro-Phoenicians founded in Kition a Cypriot, not a Levantine, “kingdom”.
From the Hinterland to the Coastal Landscape: the political economy of a Cypriot central place (extended abstract) That Ancient Paphos functioned as a place of economic and ideological centrality in the context of a Cypriot polity, from circa the 13 th c. BC to the very end of the fourth c. BC., is amply confirmed by a wealth of architectural and mortuary evidence, which in the first millennium BC are amplified by scores of inscriptions and silver coins issued by state-leaders, invariably identified as kings of Paphos 1. The richness of the epigraphical and material evidence notwithstanding, the key question regarding the economic system(s) that led to the millennium-long success of Ancient Paphos as a central place, had not been approached before the initiation of the Palaepaphos Urban Landscape Project (PULP), a landscape analysis programme that has been running since 2006 2. PULP's diachronic approach to the little known landscape of the region of Paphos has revealed in the interplay of natural (e.g. coastal uplift and river silting) and anthropogenic (e.g. Mediaeval sugar cane plantations) factors, the reasons behind the drastic transformations of the micro-region's economy from prehistory to the present day 3. With respect to antiquity, we are now in a position to provide a preliminary, though still sketchy, cultural biography 4 of the region and a more robust and secure one of the central place. When did the region of Paphos first come under a central authority, which maintained communication and exchange routes from the high altitude of the Paphos forest-where the rich timber and metal resources are concentrated-all the way south to the coast (MAP)? Contrary to the evidence from the north coast of Cyprus, where incipient stages in the emergence of socio-political complexity, including offshore exchanges, are in evidence since the Early Bronze Age 5 , the configuration of the human territory of Paphos in the later third millennium BC shows no internal networking and no signs of contact with the coast. The currently
MEANING 2017-2019
An A.G. Leventis Funded University of Cyprus Research Project
Prof. Maria Iacovou (Principal Investigator)
From the metalliferous sources to the citadel complex of Ancient Paphos:
archaeo-environmental analysis of the mining and the built environment
CERAMIC IDENTITIES AND AFFINITIES OF THE REGION OF PAPHOS DURING THE BRONZE AGE
(3rd and 2nd millennia BC)
Archaeological Research Unit, University of Cyprus
Saturday, 19 September 2015
The research programme ARIEL (Archaeological Investigations of the Extra-Urban and Urban Landscape in eastern Mediterranean centres: a case-study at Palaepaphos) announces the organization of an international workshop, entitled “Ceramic identities and affinities of the region of Paphos during the Bronze Age (3rd and 2nd millennia BC)” to be held at the Archaeological Research Unit Lecture Room on Saturday, the 19th of September 2015. The workshop is organized by Dr Artemis Georgiou (scientist in charge of ARIEL) and Professor Maria Iacovou (ARIEL’s coordinator). ARIEL is a Marie Sklodowska Curie Career Integration Grant, hosted by the Archaeological Research Unit (Department of History and Archaeology) of the University of Cyprus. This inter-disciplinary research programme aims to illuminate the development of the polity of Paphos during the Bronze Age, and to identify its urban and extra-urban structure.
The workshop aspires to elucidate the idiosyncratic pottery production of the region of Paphos during the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC in terms of fineware, storage, transport and cooking vessels. The workshop also seeks to define the affinities of the Paphian ceramic industry in relation to the production of neighbouring regions and more distant areas of the island. The ARIEL workshop will host leading scholars and young researchers in the field of Cypriot archaeology. The participants will present original material and innovative, inter-disciplinary research approaches to ceramic studies